


flying, free

by mercuriosity



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-03
Updated: 2009-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-06 09:46:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercuriosity/pseuds/mercuriosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I know why the caged bird beats his wing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	flying, free

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through Chapter 105.

_I know why the caged bird beats his wing  
  Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;  
For he must fly back to his perch and cling  
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;  
  And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars  
And they pulse again with a keener sting--  
I know why he beats his wing!_  
~"Sympathy", Paul Laurence Dunbar

\---

Lying in the hospital bed after Hiashi leaves, Neji hears the rhythm of his heart reflected in the beating of birds' wings. The image of his uncle's bowed head burns behind his eyelids, and for the first time in years, he remembers his father's words:

_"Neji, you will live to protect her."_

And his own enthusiastic reply: _"Yes, Father!"_

Somewhere in this very same hospital, Hinata is lying unconscious, shallow breaths barely tethering her to this world; because he had tried to bring her down to his level, had wanted her to taste the bitterness that was his constant companion.

And it's as if Naruto hit him hard enough to knock something loose--the knot of pain and anger and resentment in his chest that had quietly grown for ten years is gone, and shame pours in to take its place.

He has broken his promise and dishonored his father's memory. He will never do so again.

\---

But the greatest realization, the one that takes his breath away years later when his mind finally catches up to what his heart has known for a while now, is that Hinata is _worth_ protecting.

She's become strong, much stronger than anyone ever imagined was possible. She knows twenty ways to stop a heart and thirty ways to make it start beating again. She and Sakura are mainstays at the hospital, alongside the Hokage, and more than once Hinata has worked long stretches of hours that would tax even his stamina. Once, Neji heard her father rebuking her for missing an important clan meeting the previous evening.

"I'm sorry, father," Hinata had said quietly, "but I was needed at the hospital."

Neji thinks that although it was an apology, her voice was prouder than he had ever heard. Her eyes, though shadowed and weary, held a determination that he had only seen once before: when she had faced him, and refused to be afraid.

There's a new respect in the eyes of the villagers and clan members when they look at her which fills Neji with a feeling he can't identify at first—he's only ever felt pride in his own abilities before. She's become a beautiful woman and a strong ninja; whether in a flak jacket or a formal kimono, she holds herself with perfect poise. But, he knows, her true strength doesn't lie in either role.

She still cries for every person she must fight, and every patient she cannot save. And when Neji drags himself back from a mission, dead-eyed and spattered with blood--his, not his, it hardly matters--she is there to wash it away, to bandage what can be bandaged; to hear the words he doesn't say, and cry the tears he can't.

In a world full of people like him, finely-honed tools of war, trained to kill their own hearts as they drive the knife into their enemy's, he looks at her and sees something infinitely rarer and more valuable. He had thought his strength a cruel twist of fate, a gift designed only to make his cage unbearable, but he knows now what it is for: to protect this light, this fragile and precious strength that he can never have, so that it doesn't stop existing in the world altogether.

He thinks that for all the power of his sight, he is blind not to have seen it before.

\---

Lately, they've taken up sparring together. Ostensibly, it's a part of Hinata's training, but Neji finds that demonstrating and deconstructing techniques for a slower learner is actually helpful to him, too. Even more, it's an opportunity for them to talk in relative privacy; for Neji to open up bit by bit and Hinata to unburden her mind of family expectations and political negotiations.

"Father called me into talk last night," Hinata says as they move slowly through the motions of a form he's been teaching her.

"About what?" Thrust, parry, circle.

"The clan elders feel it's time I get married," she says, without blinking an eye, and Neji is so startled he nearly forgets the next move.

"Do they have someone eligible in mind?" he asks when he can be reasonably sure of keeping his voice even.

Hinata's brow furrows, though whether it is because she dislikes the subject or simply because she is concentrating, Neji doesn't know. "I believe there are...a few," she says. "But I haven't met them."

They don't talk anymore for a while as they go through the form again, more quickly. Neji does not allow himself to be distracted by this news, and yes, there it is—a slight hesitation, a weakness in her stance that he immediately exploits. In a flash, he sweeps her feet out from beneath her and surges forward, taking her down. Her breath escapes in a grunt as her back hits the ground. For a moment, nothing breaks the silence in the clearing except their heavy breathing and the pounding of his own heart in his ears.

"There," he says finally, his hand wrapped around her throat. "If I were an enemy, I could have killed you by now."

"But you're not my enemy," Hinata says, looking up at him through dark lashes. "Are you?"

The breathless sound of her voice, though he knows it to be from simple physical exertion, sends a charge like lightning through him. He _wants_, suddenly; he aches for something he doesn't have words for, something beyond the reach of his destiny and his role and his limitations. His lips are halfway to hers before he catches himself, straining. He sees his own surprise mirrored in her identical eyes.

"I--" he begins, to give he knows not what explanation.

He is saved by the sudden arrival of a hospital messenger, who bows to Hinata and says, "I apologize for interrupting your training, Hinata-sama, but there is an emergency—"

"Of course," Hinata says, too quickly, and she is standing up and brushing dirt from her clothes, and in the flash of a transportation jutsu they are both gone, leaving Neji alone to calm his wildly beating heart.

\---

They steer away from each other for nearly two weeks after that, until one day as Neji is walking down one of the cool, silent hallways of the Hyuuga compound, a door opens abruptly; Hinata emerges, and there is no avoiding it. Neji can see the unsmiling faces of the clan heads before Hinata closes the door on the room behind her. One hand remains on the door, hesitant, as if she is not sure which of them she wants to escape more.

"What did they say?" he asks, clumsily. It's none of his business to ask, but he doesn't know what else to say to her.

"They wanted to talk of marriage again," she says.

Something hooks in his chest, drawing his breath out painfully. "And?" he asks when he can bear it no longer.

Hinata's eyes don't meet his. "The first of the suitors arrives next week," she says, low, before turning away and swiftly retreating down the corridor.

\---

The guest who arrives at the Hyuuga compound six days later is Yamane-san, from Water Country. Neji, who has been imagining a stout, balding, middle-aged merchant, is surprised to find instead a tall, pleasant-looking man who can't be more than a few years older than Hinata. Hiashi and the man disappear inside to talk together while he and Hinata are sparring, and Neji is so badly composed that Hinata actually lands two or three decent strikes on him.

Afterwards, while she's bandaging him up, she says, "Yamane-san has asked my father for permission to take me out to dinner tomorrow night." She pauses. "I asked to have you accompany me. That is, i-if you don't mind."

He hesitates only a moment, her hands still on him, weighing how much it will pain him to accept or refuse; knowing, even as he does, that he cannot refuse her.

"Yes," he says. He feels the bars of the cage closing, shrinking around him. In the distance, a door slides open and Yamane emerges, bowing to Hiashi and smiling. "Of course."

\---

Neji feels a brief glimmer of satisfaction when Yamane pales slightly at their meeting. But the man recovers quickly, smiling and offering his hand. "Neji-san," he says. "Very nice to meet you."

At the restaurant, he takes a seat at the bar, far away enough not to hear what they say, and nurses a single drink throughout the night. Yamane, he is dismayed to see, is gentlemanly and well-mannered: he talks easily and expansively without dominating the conversation. Hinata listens and nods politely, answers his questions and asks a few of her own, and smiles. But she doesn't come alive to the sound of his voice; she doesn't laugh.

After dinner, Yamane escorts Hinata back the Hyuuga compound. Neji stands a discreet distance away as they part ways outside Hinata's door.

"Good night, Hinata-chan," Yamane says, pressing a kiss to her hand, and Neji resists the urge to break the man's neck. Hinata graces him with a smile and watches him leave.

"He was...nice," she says.

"Yes," Neji replies, because he senses she wants him to say something.

"Thank you for coming with me."

He bows. "Good night, Hinata-sama," he says, turning to go.

There's a heartbeat of hesitation, and then Hinata's soft voice calls him back. "Wait," she says, "Neji," and even before she puts a hand on his arm he is turning around again and kissing her, urgently, and she is clutching at his shoulders, arching against the wall to meet him.

"Neji," she says breathlessly in between kisses, "the door—" He reaches out and slides it open with one hand, and they stumble through. He presses her against the wall as soon as the door is shut behind them.

The shell of her ear flushes when he breathes against it; her body trembles in his arms when he kisses the curve of her throat. He feels dizzy, her soft sighs and the rustle of silk filling his head. He kneels in front of her; his hands find the knot of her sash.

"Can I—?" he whispers, and she answers, "Yes, yes, yes—"

When he puts his mouth on her, she lets out a choked cry, one fist clenched against her mouth to muffle the sound. He licks into her unsteadily, almost shaking with need. She puts her hand on his face, tugging his chin upwards; their eyes meet for a trembling, drawn-out moment. Slowly, his eyes never leaving hers, he slides a single finger inside her, and she cries out his name, shaking hard.

Before her gasping breaths have even stopped, he hooks an arm behind her knees and lifts, carrying both of them the short distance to her bed. The sight of her under the moonlight coming in through the window—pale skin against dark kimono against white sheets—makes his pounding heart skip a beat. He is spurred to action again by the feeling of her small fingers unfastening his shirt, pushing it back from his shoulders, and her eyes on him, as if—as if she wants to look at him, too, as if she's been denying herself the same way he has.

She should be shy and blushing, and he should be reserved; but when they are together, they are neither of them the people they are used to being. She wraps a leg around his waist and he muffles his helpless groan against her mouth as he sinks into her. Hinata whispers, "Neji, Neji," as they move, like a prayer, and Neji thinks: he liked being _nii-san_ to her, but he likes this better.

When she comes, the feel of her convulsing around him and the sound of her soft "oh, oh, oh," send Neji over the edge; he buries his face in her neck and sees stars explode behind his eyes.

Afterwards, they lie in the dark, their rough breaths the only sound breaking the silence. Neji strokes his fingers through Hinata's hair as her head rests against his chest.

"Don't marry him," he says.

"No," says Hinata.

"Don't marry any of the others."

"No, no," she says, and she threads her fingers through his as he tips her face up to kiss her. The moonlight pouring in through the window casts crisscrossing bars of shadow against the white sheets, cage-like; but clutching Hinata's hand in his, Neji feels freer than he has in years; heart flying high and light on bird's wings.


End file.
